Far-flung, but never far away

Khan will turn 62 in July. The Jaguars are not his retirement gift to himself. “I make no bones about it. I’ve told this to everybody—the No. 1 priority for me is Flex-N-Gate,” he said.

Khan won’t be front and center in Jacksonville because he can’t be. Running Flex-N-Gate keeps him busy all over the world.

“He may be in Mexico, he may be in the Far East, he may be in Germany or Austria or wherever it might be. You’re going to find him all over the place,” said Sid Micek, president of the University of Illinois Foundation.

Khan is on the foundation’s board and has donated millions of dollars to the school. Micek knows football; he was a quarterback at Kansas, where he handed off to future Pro Football Hall of Famer Gale Sayers.

“Right now, he’s in that stage of his life where he’s growing everything. He’s a still a very, very active guy.”

But he’s there even when he’s not. Mike Mularkey, the Jaguars’ new head coach, gets a kick out of getting texts or calls from Khan that originate from some far-flung locale.

“I don’t know how Shad does everything that he does, knowing the size of the company, the number of companies he has, the number of things he has on his plate,” Mularkey says. “He has so much energy. It shows. You never see him in any kind of frustrated (mood), ‘I got to be here, I got to be there.’ ”

Khan’s friends and family say he has a unique ability to fix ailing companies, first by figuring out what’s not working properly and then finding the right people to make improvements. That’s what he’s trying to do with the Jaguars.

He has hired Mark Lamping to run the business side of the team as president. Lamping was most recently the chief executive officer of the New Meadowlands Stadium Company. Before that, he was president of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Lamping sees parallels between the Cardinals and Jaguars because they are both in relatively small and regional markets. The Jaguars will focus on strengthening their ties to Jacksonville while reaching out to the surrounding areas. Khan also wants the Jaguars to lead the NFL’s push into the international market.

None of those initiatives will be easy or cheap, and Khan is expected to invest heavily in the team. “He’s the type of person that has very high expectations, and at the same time is very committed to providing the resources to make achieving those expectations possible,” Lamping said.

Khan’s hallmark in business is that he uses a meticulous, systematic approach. He’ll operate the same way in Jacksonville, though the football world and automotive world are vastly different. “The football is easy. One team’s going to win, one team’s going to lose. Auto parts … 10 companies have to lose for one company to win,” he said. “So you look at football and you say, ‘My God, this is easy.’ ”

Under the radar no more

Let’s end with a story about a napkin. The bar at the Omni Hotel in Jacksonville was empty except for the two men finalizing a sale that only a handful of others knew about. In one chair sat Weaver, who made his millions as the owner of two chains of shoe stores, Shoe Carnival and Nine West. In the other sat Khan. The two had known each other for several years, since shortly after Khan decided to pursue buying an NFL team.

This was an old-school way of doing business—two successful and experienced men hashing out their deal without all the lawyers and accountants and whoever else often clutter up such transactions. Yes, the I-dotters and T-crossers were involved (these are businessmen, not fools), but not now. This was just Weaver and Khan. They had a pen to write with and a napkin to write on and a tabletop to talk over and nobody to bug them as they did so.

That is how Khan likes to do business, man to man, without any attention. In his career as an auto parts titan, he never gave interviews, never had a PR person on staff. He had a remarkable story to tell but no interest in telling it because there was no upside to it. “In the auto industry, it’s not about you. It’s like the nail that stands up gets hammered,” he says.

Now everything is about him. He is the new face of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and it has taken some getting used to for him. Before the Rams deal became public, nobody knew who he was; now everything he says and does gets dissected. He owned his boat, the Kismet, for years and never heard a peep about it. Then he docked it in Jacksonville, and it was news for days.

As he sits inside his windowless office inside the football stadium that is now his, he seems to be enjoying the ride. Autographed footballs and Jaguars helmets sit on built-in shelves behind his desk. There is little, if anything, to identify this room as Khan’s. From his life full of adventures he has saved few mementos. But he’s going to frame that napkin and put it in here. He should hang a fake mustache next to it.